Some of my Favorites from this year-so far ;)

So here are a  few of my favorite pages done both for Scrap Your World and just for home.

This one is one of my favorites for a few reasons. The pictures are so candid (thanks to my cousin Pamela for taking them!) I made my own background paper with Distress Inks, and I made a VERY old set of embellishments fit in with inks as well.

This layout was done for a Distressing class I taught at Scrap Your World in March of this year. We used masks, distressing tools, inks, glimmer mist and tearing. I was so much fun!
I used Webster's Pages Lullaby Lane line, Tim Holtz masks, Tattered Angel's Olive Glimmer Mist, Cosmo Cricket chipboard letters, KaiserCraft doilie, JilliBean corrugated accents, as well as several distress inks, lace and some brads.

 This is an album I made for my grandmother for her 80th birthday. Inside are pictures of our entire family: her, her 5 daughters, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren. I just posted a few pictures of it here, not the full album, which is 52 pages plus the covers ;)
I used Fancy Pants Lilac House for the album, as well as Prima flowers, KaiserCraft lace and Doilie, JilliBean corrugated accents. The album is 7Gypsies, as well as cardstock added to make it fit everyone.

This page was literally painful to make-my cutter broke while cutting the paper and the blade dug into my thumb!
Paper is from a book of coordinating papers

 I made this one for the KaiserCraft DT call earlier this year. I didn't get accepted, but I still had fun trying! :)
I love using "girly" papers in non-girly ways.
I used KaiserCraft's Hippy Chick for this one

My high school graduation pictures.

This one was done for Scrap Your World, using Cosmo Cricket's Pixielicious line

So here are some of my favorites I made in 2010. Most were done for Scrap Your World, but some were just for me lol

 These pictures were taken by my cousin, Pamela Cummings. She's in college now studying photography.
I used Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety for this page and I really like how it turned out.

I love the things we can create with cardstock and ink! Add some ribbon and voila!
I used Tim Holtz alphabet masks and adage cards on this, as well as his Distress inks.

 LOVE the Parisian Anthology line from PinkPaislee/House of Three!! This page was so much fun to do!! How could you not love their resist-ink pages? They can be made to match anything and everything. And I'm totally addicted to the Kaisercraft doilies too lol. This is definitely one of my absolute faves I made in 2010

Kaisercraft's Secret Bird Society line was just perfect for this picture of Marshall in a tree. Combined with their lace and doilie even better!

 These next three pictures are of a two-page layout I did using Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety again. I don't grow veggies, fruits or flowers, but I sure did grow some goofy kids ;)

Thanks for looking!! Tomorrow will be some of my faves from this year so far, then I can start posting as I make them :)

Favorites of My Boys

Now what kind of Mom would I be if I didn't scrapbook all my kids together? lol

 This one is one of my favorites more for the colors and pictures than what I did to it.

I love tearing in to two-sided papers and pulling them back on themselves. Sometimes I think that's why they were made that way ;)

This is page one of a 2-pager. It was so much FUN to do!! I glued some scrapbook sand to my pages in various spots then covered it with walnut ink and a bit of brown paint where the pink still shone through after the ink dried. I also sprayed a bit of ink on the background to give the muddy feel to match the pictures.

 Hard to tell them apart as babies in pictures, even though they all have their own looks now. It's hard to see it but on that blue piece of paper with the brad bar on it is a clear owl

 Marshall and Evan making mud with bubbles-wearing white of course! lol

This pages has a funny story to it. The rain coat, hat and boots where purchase BEFORE I bought my own kids' rain gear, and I purposefully went looking to find them gear to match the embellishment! Not only that, it took me til a couple years after the pictures were taken to even use the embellishments! Yeah-some people change their kids clothes to co-ordinate one another. Nope, I buy clothes that co-ordinate with my embellishments lol

Oldies Part 3 (Owen)

Ok, so it's kind of hard to call these ones "Oldies" since Owen is only 4 1/2 lol but here are a few of him that I still love looking at over and over again.

This one was a great way to showcase a lot of pictures with the same theme, and to use up some "z's" from various alphabets.
Owen will sleep anywhere and everywhere-even now! When he gets sleepy, he's out and it doesn't matter where he is!

This is a sketch from Creative Scrappers that just fit this picture perfectly.

 Another Creative Scrappers Sketch that allowed me to use up some scraps :)

This one was one of those "get dirty and have fun" pages. I used blue and green inks to cover the negative holders, then popped them up so i could put brads in the centers. I also inked the papers and chipboard letters.

 I love this one because is has a "rustic" feel without doing too much distressing.

This one was a lot of fun. I just pulled out a couple stamps sets and made my own patterned paper with absolutely no pictures in mind, or even an idea for a layout. I was just in the mood to stamp lol. I made the border strip first then branched out from there.

This one was based solely on the pictures. At the time, I had my scrapbook workstation set up in our living room. Owen got into my drawer of ribbons and wrapped them on him like necklaces, saying "Me so pitty Mommy" (Pretty).
I used the ribbons he played with on the background and copied his words. (I'm sure he will hate me for this one when he's older lol)

Some Oldies Part 2 (Evan)

So in this post I've added some of my favorites of Evan, my middles son. I know there's more of him that are my favorites than of Marshall, but I think that has a lot to do with how I've progressed as a scrapbooker. Marshall's pages were mostly done as I was learning so a lot of his pages, while still good, don't pop out at me as much as the ones of Evan and Owen.

This is one of my favorites for several reasons: I wrote the poem, I love the picture, and I used UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) on a few things: the water in the picture and the rocks I cut out of the paper. "Bubby" is what Evan used to call my dad when he was little.

I distressed this one without even knowing really what "distressing" was lol. I just liked the way the ink looked when you rubbed it on Bazzill cardstock-I didn't realize there was an actual name for it when I did this one. I just wanted a rough/dirty look to match the feel of packing boxes.

 This one was for a challenge on a site (I really can't remember which one!) where we had to leave White Space. Once you've seen a lot of my pages, you'll realize how hard of a challenge this was for me! I tend to use up as much space as I can on each page-I mean, that's why we do 12x12, right? lol

 This is one of my favorites for the lack of color in the paper, allowing the pictures to really pop out. The words over the picture were printed on a transparency using Word and various text boxes and fonts. I had printed it ages before these pictures were taken and I had planned on cutting the words out for another page, but they fit this perfectly!

This is one of my favorites because of all the non-traditional elements I used: wood, burlap, cardboard (which has become a favorite even now!) combined with the flower and rock papers, as well as the stones in the picture.

 This one is so much a favorite, I have it on my living room wall. There's not much to say about it really, just that it all fits together so well.

 This one was for an on-going elimination-type challenge years ago on another website I can't remember. The challenge was to use white as a back ground, a solid blue ribbon of any shade and black cardstock. Inks and stamps were allowed but no other colors or patterned papers. Eek! What a challenge! What looks great when done, took me AGES to figure out!

 This was another challenge in the contest I mentioned above. We had to use a certain amount of buttons, flowers, types of ribbon, circles, 3 patterned papers, and the numbers 1, 2 and 10 had to appear! Another one that took me awhile, but with awesome results!

 This one was a fun page I basically threw together one day. I used mostly scraps, some felt pieces, doodling and an insert from a notebook scuffed up a bit.

Some Oldies but Favorites (Marshall)

Well, I'm going to start with some older scrapbook pages I've done that I still love looking at even today. I know, it sounds silly-we should love all our creations, right? I do love my work but I still have a few that I look at and feel super proud and think to myself "Wow I really rocked this one!" ;)
The ones in this post are all of my oldest son.

This page was one of my first attempts at paper weaving a few years ago (a technique I love to use even now). This page was done way back when I still cut letters by hand from stencils! (gasp! lol)

 This is a page I did when I was on the DT for Pages Of The Heart back in 2006. Wow it doesn't seem like it was that long ago!
One of the things I like about this page is how the paint swatch pops out the blue patterned paper and the blue on his shirt. The tag with the journaling is actually a wooden tag I covered with the paint swatch.

 This page is from when I really started to get into the distressing side of things more often. I guess that's my "style" now. This one was done back in 2008-ish. I also love to use flowers on boy pages. They may not appreciate it when they grow up, but oh well ;)

This one was my first ever attempt at paper pleating-and I started off with a bang! All four edges of this 12x12 page has pleats. This was also my first attempt at printing on vellum that wasn't confined to text box. And this paper piecing is one of my favorites as well.

 This one was actually a challenge from Paws On Scrapbooking a few years ago. We had to dig into our scraps and choose 3-4 pieces without looking! Talk about out of my comfort zone! lol But I have to say, I really really like how it turned out. It also allowed me to scrap some pics I wasn't sure what to do with (which is a secret of mine for dealing with challenges-use pictures you haven't figured out what to do with, that way there's no re-printing necessary if it doesn't turn out, and a bonus if it does!)

 This one I got the idea from a magazine a while ago (Well almost 6 years since Marshall's almost 11 now). I've actually started doing this for all 3 boys with a picture I take of them around their birthday. It's a great way to showcase what they were like at each age without writing a novel or making a whole album lol.

This is another one I did with supplies from being on the DT for Pages of The Heart. The "6" in 16 Months is actually a thin metal